Pickup trucks with toppers are useful for providing security and weather protection for items being transported or stored in the pickup truck. Generally, toppers sit against an upper perimeter of a pickup box and are attached to the pickup box with clamps. The clamps are time consuming to attach and remove. In addition, most toppers weigh several hundred pounds and are difficult to manually lift on and off a pickup box. Accordingly, most toppers, after an initial installation, are seldom removed except in special circumstances.
Toppers generally have a door aligned with the rear of the pickup truck. Generally the door is upwardly pivotable while a tailgate on the pickup is downwardly pivotable. When both the door and the tailgate are opened an opening is provided for loading objects into, and removing objects from, the protective interior cavity defined by the topper and pickup box. In most toppers, the door is not as large as the entire rear wall of the topper. Accordingly, certain objects cannot be loaded into the cavity because the opening is too small, even though such objects would fit in the cavity itself.
Previous attempts to provide topper lifts have included systems that pivotably lift three sides of the topper relative to the pickup box. The fourth side of the topper is hingedly connected to the pickup box. Generally this pivot has been provided along one of the long sides of the topper rather than the front or back. The vast majority of these types of lifts are provided to lift “caps” having minimal or no sidewalls. These caps essentially provide a roof that sits on top of the pickup box. The generally planar configuration of these caps makes them easier to pivot because there are no extended sidewalls to generate extreme torques about the pivotable edge. These torques could easily deform the topper and/or shatter any windows provided by the topper. Further, in an effort to avoid these torques, when these types of pivotable systems have been provided for toppers having extended sidewalls they generally do not pivot the topper to a full vertical position (i.e., they pivot the topper less than 90 degrees upward from horizontal), or they require a stabilizer bar extending across a portion of the cargo area. Accordingly, these pivotable systems, while providing some increased access to the pickup box, are unsatisfactory because they do not provide full access from the rear of the truck, obstruct a portion of the cargo area, and/or are not stable enough to be transported in the open configuration.